


A Song to Weep, A Song to Wake

by AmnesicSorcerer



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Alternate Universe - Orchestra, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, POV Neil Josten, and they're in the school orchestra or something idk, everyone's at uni for music, i didn't clarify that in the fic at all but i'm saying it here, i guess kevin is assistant conductor?? with a side in harassing the first chair, i have very little idea where i'm going with this i might have to change archive warnings as i go, i went to weird schools i don't know how the normal world works, is there an aftg quarantine fic tag??, just to be clear on that, music is the comfort, no but i found this, someone's gotta do it, this is my second ever fic and we don't have beta readers in this house, viola player neil, violin player andrew
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26868673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmnesicSorcerer/pseuds/AmnesicSorcerer
Summary: It's the middle of the pandemic and cooping up yourself AND your feelings is going very poorly for both Andrew and Neil, who by the way do not know each other in more than passing (yet *eyebrow waggle*). Neil feels unsafe playing alone where he could be heard, and Andrew can't stand the vulnerability that comes with a creative outlet. He has a habit (he considers appalling) of playing on the roof of his apartment and playing *all night*. Once he starts he's got to let it all out; there's no stuffing that back in where it came from. Neil, feeling restless in his own right, clings on to the thread of music from the apartment building across the street, allowing it to tempt him into playing first in the relative safety of his own apartment, and eventually drawing him up onto his own roof.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	A Song to Weep, A Song to Wake

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like if instruments were people then I’d probably eat shit for being a violinist and talking about the viola the way I do in this fic but oH WELL. I also realized that I know very little about what songs viola players enjoy listening to/playing/venerating. I have old viola-playing friends but I haven’t spoken to them since before I left for college and I am not about to text them and be like "hi hello yes long time no see i'm writing fanfiction about queer fake-sport players and the mafia except in my version the main character plays viola please tell me what he'd listen to/play".
> 
> This fic was inspired by my musings on Jascha Heifetz. Now I haven’t fact checked ANY of this so excuse any misconceptions, but I had a friend who was an excellent violinist and who idolized Heifetz. He spoke often about how people called Heifetz heartless, cold, removed, cruel, and would say, “but have you heard him play? I don’t know how someone could play like that and be heartless. I don’t know how you could hear him and think he feels nothing.”
> 
> And upon remembering this my brain was like “Oh,,,, Andrew?” and lo and behold. Here we are.
> 
> Anyways this is my second ever fic and I did not have it beta'd, I didn't even really read it over twice, I'm tired, I haven't written in months, next chapter is coming in the interminable future, screw planning and plot I am publishing this now. Enjoy.

Viola had not been Neil’s first-choice instrument. He had wanted to play the violin, with its soaring solos, its tone at turns strident and piercing and mellow. Some time early on after he and his mother had left Baltimore they were in a hotel room, and on the TV was an old recording of an orchestra performance.

Heifetz, playing Sibelius. Something about it gripped him; the urgency of the playing, even the slow notes played with agonizing need. It was as if they were begging to run off to the next note, the next beat, the next bar and line. To  _ run _ .

Regardless, his mother would not let him play violin because it would draw too much attention. Violas were always sidelined, and rarely had solos, and so sometimes he would be allowed to join his school’s orchestra or town’s youth orchestra as a viola player. At first it was merely an acceptable substitute, but as time passed he realized that if he were given the choice to switch over to the violin, he wouldn’t.

The viola was not weaker than the violin. It was deeper, richer, fuller. Its tone was warm and spread its roots inside of him steadily. It was touch when he needed comfort. It was expression when he had no one to speak to.

* * *

Andrew did not love the violin. He didn’t even really tolerate it. What Andrew felt for the violin, he felt was best described as  _ hate _ .

When he touched it, it was with apprehension. When he played, it was with disdain. His action was muddy; his bow work loose to the point of sloppiness. He’d had a teacher tell him once, in exasperation, that this was the first time he’d encountered a student who needed to stiffen up rather than relax.

Andrew had not answered him but had let his bow clatter noisily to the floor, slipping out of his fingers and causing everyone around him to wince.

* * *

So it was plague times. Quarantine era. Lockdown hours. Whatever. It made Neil feel like his insides had been tossed in a blender and garnished with lemon because campus was closed which meant that practice rooms were closed which meant that if he played people could  _ hear _ him. Which, in turn, meant that he wasn’t fucking playing.

It was driving him insane.

He would open the case. Close it. Open it, finger the dust cover. Turn and walk abruptly into the kitchen and make a very emotionally-charged meal of smoothie (which looked like his insides) and then plunk it down on the table and stare at the shape of his viola under the fake velvet across the apartment. Sip the smoothie, condensation wetting his fingers. Suddenly find himself touching the brown-red varnish instead of his smoothie, breathing in the scent of resin instead of strawberry, his now-dry fingers making soft shushing noises over the spruce top. He pulled back, and put his hands on his knees, clenching them. He stared at the viola. It stared at him.

“ _ No _ ,” he growled, shutting the case and, after some consideration, shoving it under his bed where it couldn’t tempt him.

It worked, sort of. At least it didn’t stare at him dolefully across the room but he knew where it was and its presence was a beacon in his mind. Ugh.

* * *

Andrew would relate, if he knew what was happening in the apartment building across the street, to a boy he only knew in passing, but he did not. He would also probably not admit that he could relate. His violin sat open on his desk, shoulder rest on, dust cover off, bow sitting loose but not clipped in. He didn’t look at it and he certainly didn’t think about it.

The quarantine was wearing on him, though. He was trapped in his apartment with his thoughts and nothing else and it was getting to the point where every second thought he had made him want to put his fist through the wall.

His phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. Kevin, reminding everyone of virtual rehearsal later that day. Andrew wouldn’t go. That was one good thing about quarantine: no one could show up at his apartment and harass him until he went to rehearsal. A spike of irritation suddenly bucked in his chest, and he swallowed against it, staring at the wall.

He tried, he really did. He violently chopped vegetables and violently fried them and then violently shoved him in his mouth. He reminded himself that he hated the violin. He envisioned picking it up by the neck and smashing it against the wall, stepping on it so the bridge went through the belly, and he imagined the painfully sharp edges of the shards in his hands afterwards. But despite all this, at ten at night he stormed over to his violin, grabbed it, and made his way up to the roof.

Once up there, he took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air, and then another, and another. He was on the verge of hyperventilating. He gritted his teeth, put his violin on his shoulder, and floated his fingers over the strings gently. With his hand in third position, and his bow languid and elegant in his hand, he pressed down his second finger on the A string and listened as his E string rang in sympathy with it. Despite his neglect, it always did keep its tuning well. He tuned quickly, efficiently, and then immediately moved on to a song that was honestly way too difficult for having not warmed up at all. Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 by Beethoven--or just “Kreutzer”. He ripped through the chords at the beginning violently, agonizingly. He knew Kevin would scold him and tell him that it wasn’t  _ meant  _ to be played that way but Andrew really couldn’t give a shit.

After the first savage burst of the opening, he mellowed out a little bit until the piece sped up again. He smashed his way through the staccato, using the weight at the frog of the bow and relaxed wrist to make the notes harrowing and loud. The wind was loud. He was a bleeding heart on a rooftop and there was absolutely no one to be his witness.

* * *

The wind howled. It was almost musical, at times, the groan of the wind rushing across his window frame building a chord with the whistle that wormed its way into the glass. Neil closed his eyes and listened to it. He dozed on the couch.

He woke up at, and looked at the digital clock he kept on the coffee table fuzzily. Four AM. The wind had died down somewhat. He rubbed at his eyes. He needed to take his contacts out before they melded with his eyeballs. Standing up, he crossed to the window to take the hallway to the bathroom.

He heard a snatch of song. He stopped, silent and still, trying to decide if it had just been the wind and his overactive imagination. He held his breath and heard it again, a faint trembling in the air, so he threw open his window to hear it better. Where was it coming from? With the help of the open window, Neil identified the piece as  _ Liebeslied  _ by Fritz Kreisler, and sighed against the chilly breeze blowing his hair out of his face.

After a moment of thought, Neil darted to his bedroom to dispose of his contacts and throw on a sweater before returning to the window. The music was still there, crescendoing through the last iteration of the theme in a way that was entirely too harsh for what he’d heard in the past. He took out the screen, and sat on the window ledge, leaning against the side and closing his eyes. His fingers curled around the edge, going stiff in the cold. He listened.

He didn’t doze, but time started to slip past him easier again. The music eased in tone little by little, moving from visceral overwhelm to more subtle emotions. The player dabbled in playfulness, in mournfulness, and in fear. It would always come crashing back to that overbearing pain, like gravity. Like a tsunami.

Neil knew it was a player and not someone’s speakers because it was too imperfect to be professional. Whoever it was, they clearly had talent and creativity, but they needed to practice. Neil wasn’t sure what he’d call bulling through song after song without pause all night but it wasn’t exactly  _ practice _ .

When the sun started to come up and the sky got lighter, Neil opened his eyes to catch a glimpse of a silhouette. On the roof. There was the delicate curve of an elbow from shoulder to fingerboard. The violinist was on the  _ roof? _

The sky didn’t even make it from watery gray to delicately warmed blue before the silhouette disappeared, taking the music with it. Neil pried his fingers off of the window ledge and fell more than climbed back into his apartment. He purposefully went back to the couch instead of his bedroom to fall asleep again until whatever woke him next.

He wanted to play.


End file.
